


Sweetness Follows

by ShastaFirecracker



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alive Ianto Jones, Children of Earth Fix-It, Domestic, Family Dinners, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Ianto's Family, Light Angst, M/M, Meet the Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 20:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18483784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: After one of the most horrific weeks of her life, Rhiannon refuses to let her brother disappear into his mysterious job again without giving her some real answers - or without introducing her to the man he's in love with.





	Sweetness Follows

**Author's Note:**

> My personal vision of CoE fix-it: Ianto doesn't go inside Thames House, but the virus is still released and Jack dies and is captured there. Jack attempts routing the death-frequency through himself first, just in case it might work, and it does. He's still shaken by the knowledge that he was prepared to use Steven next if that had failed, and he's sure Alice knows he would have, so she has disappeared from his life and he will never see her or Steven again.
> 
> This is consistent enough with my future-Torchwood fic "Your Job Knows What It Is" that I consider these to be within the same AU, but they're not related otherwise.

-

_listen here, my sister and my brother_   
_what would you care if you lost the other?_

-

Rhiannon came on like a storm cloud, cheeks streaked with tears she no longer noticed, bruised and scraped and terrorized but still standing, and her fist landed square on Ianto's collarbone. He stumbled with a wince and a hiss, and she punched him again in the shoulder, not so hard, and then she was wrapped around him and clinging like she'd never let go again.

“Christ,” she sobbed, voice thick with fury. “You wanker, you bloody fool. Never again, never again -”

He held her tight, buried his face in her unwashed hair and closed his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he'd hugged her properly. Before the playground, probably – before Dad had told him he should've been holding on tighter, and Rhi, after a long pause, had looked at the ground and agreed.

“Is it over?” Rhi sobbed.

“It's done,” Ianto told her. “It's all done with, I promise.”

“David and Mica -”

“Nothing's gonna happen. They're safe, it's dead.”

She cried, whacked his shoulder a few more times as he swayed with her; Ianto kissed his sister's hair, and looked up just as Gwen walked up the sidewalk, holding Mica on her hip. Rhys and Johnny walked behind her, Johnny's hand in David's. The kids looked wrecked. Rhys was all but glowing, eyes on Gwen full of pride.

“Saved the world again, eh mate?” Rhys said, reaching Ianto and clapping him on the shoulder. “Knew you would. Never doubted.” It was such a lie. Gwen beamed at her husband.

“Again?” Rhiannon demanded, stepping back from Ianto. _“Again?”_

“Rhi,” Ianto said, tired.

“No, no _Rhi, leave it,”_ said Rhiannon, far too loud. “Not this time. Not this bloody time, mister.”

“I wasn't gonna say leave it,” Ianto said, catching her hand. “I was gonna say later.”

“Oh aye and when's later,” she demanded, near tears again, gripping his hand too hard. “You'll disappear, work work work, too important to talk to me, you -” She was being unfair and unreasonable and her face clearly said that she knew it, that obviously work that saved the lives of her family and all children everywhere was too important, but her pain and fear tore the words out of her throat anyway, nearly against her will.

Ianto pulled her back into a hug. “Soon,” he said. “Later is soon, Rhi, I swear. You need sleep, you need to be with David and Mica. I've got to help organize things. Cleanup, media.”

“Tomorrow,” Rhi said thickly. “I want to see you again tomorrow.”

Ianto shook his head, closed his eyes. “There's too much to do,” he said. “But I'll phone every day until I see you.”

“Don't shut me out,” Rhi whispered.

“I won't,” Ianto promised. “I won't.”

-

Ianto was right. There was too much to do, no time to do it. Liaising with governments and militaries, clearing Torchwood Three of the elimination order Frobisher had put out on it, doing damage control on the media frenzy, directing the salvage and emergency containment operations at the ruins of the Hub. The only consolation was that the rift remained relatively stable. Whether it would stay in that holding pattern until some semblance of the Hub infrastructure that monitored and contained it could be rebuilt remained to be seen.

Ianto primarily oversaw the security at the explosion site and excavation of the archives. The rubble was packed with scattered rift debris that had been in storage – a lot of it dangerous, all of it alien and therefore a profitable prospect for thieves.

A week passed, and people everywhere seemed to begin to breathe easier. Amazingly, the world's eyes were mostly off of Torchwood, despite the fact that it was, at the moment, a conspicuous gaping crater – the actions of the British government were far too hot a topic. Media of the world was talking about the dangers of alien arrivals by the traditional method, interstellar travel. No one was talking about accidental rifts in spacetime through which weapons, aliens, diseases, and space trash could simply fall into Earth's backyard without warning. Panic levels were high enough without the true nature of the rift getting out to the public.

The first day after, Rhiannon called the moment she woke up, gasping with panic. Still lying in bed, Johnny's arms around her waist while he told her to _just breathe, just breathe love,_ she dialed and cried until Ianto picked up. He hadn't slept yet.

“I dreamed about them pullin' all those bodies out of Thames House,” she sobbed. “Dreamt you was one of them.”

Ianto didn't tell her how close she had come to being right. “Kids okay?”

She sucked in a full lungful of air. “Yeah,” she said weakly. “Yeah, still sleepin.”

“You should too,” he told her, and Johnny made a noise of agreement against her neck.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Don't be,” her brother said quietly. “You can ring any time.”

But she resisted after that, and let Johnny calm her down after every time the nightmares came back – and it was every single night. Ianto called every afternoon, like clockwork. Of course he was like clockwork. He always had been. Rhiannon got in a bad habit of staring at her phone every day at quarter to two, willing it to ring.

On the sixth day, Johnny sat down at the table across from her. The news was talking about reopening schools, everything going back to normal after the weekend. Rhi didn't understand how things could ever go back to normal again.

Johnny took the phone out of her hands and laid it on the table, before holding her hands in his. “You can call first, you know,” he said.

Rhi stared at the tabletop. “He's busy,” she mumbled. “Don't want to interrupt something. S'pose he's in a meetin'.”

“If he was he'd still talk to you. He said it was all right to call.”

She made a face. “All these years I've been rolling my eyes at his work,” she said. “Always talkin' down to him about it. I thought, well God, if he'd rather be pushing papers at the most boring job in the world than talk to his own sister, he must really hate me.” She sniffed and scrubbed a hand under her nose. “I thought he hated me, Johnny, and I thought I didn't deserve it so I sort of hated him back, like. Not really, but just that little bit, that mind under your mind, that tells you what you know you shouldn't think – and all this time he's been -”

“Shh,” he said, looking worried. “Come on, don't cry.”

The phone rang. Rhiannon coughed her impending tears away, wiped her face, and answered.

“All right, Rhi?”

“Yeah. Yeah. You?”

There was a moment of silence. “You're not.”

“I am,” she insisted, standing and going over to the sink. “I'm fine. Kid's'll be back in school next week. Looks like it's all settling down.”

“Listen... I want you to talk to someone, Rhi. All right?”

“What d'you mean? I'm talking to you.”

“I mean a counsellor. A therapist. You and Johnny and the kids. Everyone who was affected by this whole thing should do.”

“Ianto, I'm all right,” Rhiannon said firmly.

He sighed. Gently, he said, “You might be now, but not tonight. Or you'll be fine for a week, and incredibly not all right for the next month. It comes and goes, PTSD.”

“I haven't got PTSD,” Rhi said, attempting to laugh.

“Well, I have,” Ianto told her bluntly. “And I just want you to get better help than I did. I want the kids to get it sorted before it grows into something it doesn't have to be. Festering and monstrous. You've got to talk it out, it's like it – it drains the infection out of the wound.”

She leaned over the sink, staring out the back window, thinking on that. “For the kids,” she says finally. “I don't want them growing up scared.”

“I don't want you to be scared, either.”

“Why've you got PTSD?” Rhi asked quietly. “What happened to you?”

Ianto laughed. “What hasn't happened to me?”

“That's not funny.”

He sobered. She could hear him clear his throat. “Do you... d'you still want to see me, now you've had a week rid of me?”

“Of course, you daft sod. You comin' over?”

“Thinking of it. Saturday dinner?”

“Come on, then,” she said. “And you're deflectin'.”

“I want to talk in person. I'm not keeping anything from you anymore, unless it's national security and I just can't.”

Rhiannon put her face in her hand, eyes closed, focused on his voice. “Hey,” she said, “bring him along.”

“What?”

“Jack,” she said. “Bring him.”

He laughed. He sounded uncomfortable. “He may not want – I'll, uh, I'll ask.”

“I don't pull the big sister card on you much, Yan,” she said, “but I demand the right to judge your boyfriend.”

“God,” he huffed, “fine.”

She smiled, her first true, uninhibited smile in a week, and she wondered why it had seemed so difficult to love her brother for so many years, when he'd been right there and perfect all along.

-

She put on a nice top, scrubbed behind Mica's ears, made David wash his hands twice. When Johnny came into the kitchen in track suit bottoms, she sent him back to the closet in outrage until he at least put on jeans. He complained but he came back out in his nicest shirt as well, and she sighed, some of the tension leaving her shoulders.

“You know, Rhi, if you always thought he was a bit ashamed of us, maybe you shouldn't be ashamed of us as well.”

“I am not,” she said. “I never have.”

“You have, a bit.”

“Johnny -”

He walked up and put his hands on her cheeks. “Hey, love, I'm not having it out. I get it. But it is what it is, like. You know, how he dresses, how he speaks.”

“He's not ashamed,” Rhiannon objected, but it was weak, and she knew Johnny wasn't wrong.

“Maybe not,” Johnny said, knowing when to let her have the final word. He rubbed her arms. “Come on, it smells bloody good in here, what've you done?”

She let him lead the change of subject with his stomach, as he so often did. Rhi wasn't a stellar cook but she could knock up a decent Sunday roast, which she had done, along with bara brith by Mam's old recipe. She was just letting Johnny's words get under her skin, wondering if she ought to put the loaf in the cupboard so as not to have anything out that would remind Ianto of their parents, when she lost the chance to a firm knocking at the door.

Johnny beat her to it, flinging the door wide with a grin and a greeting. It was already getting dark out, but from the kitchen, Rhi could make out Ianto looking sheepish in the doorway with a bottle of wine in one hand and a six of Brains in the other. Johnny took the latter and dragged Ianto into his usual bear hug, and Rhi had to laugh into her fist at the look on his face.

“All right?” Ianto wheezed. Johnny let him down.

“No more alien chanting, no more army raids,” Johnny said. “You still a criminal?”

Ianto tugged his shirt back into place after the brother-in-law mauling. It was a nice shirt, but he was wearing jeans for the first time Rhi could remember in – God, years. “Nope, innocent as a schoolboy.”

Johnny guffawed. “Full of shit. Hey, boyfriend? Boss?”

“Jack,” Ianto said, stepping in and to the side. “Just Jack.”

Rhiannon had seen glimpses of the man on the news, always in the background, directing things, trying to avoid the spotlight. She knew Susan's description of him, and Ianto's intensity when talking about finding him after the explosion, but she wasn't quite prepared for what a looker he really was. Susan wasn't wrong when she said he looked like a film star. The braces he wore over his dark blue shirt lent him an old-fashioned air that worked well alongside Ianto's usual buttoned-down fashion sense.

“Johnny, right?” said Jack, holding out his hand for a shake.

“Aye, that's me.”

“Ianto's told me stories,” said Jack, stepping inside.

“All good, I hope?”

“Of course not,” said Jack, and flashed a blinding grin with the most ridiculous dimples, and Rhiannon understood a lot of things all at once. Even Johnny seemed a bit smitten, the way he was already laughing like a loon.

Rhiannon stepped out of the kitchen and held her arms out for Ianto to walk into. He strode over and took the offered hug without hesitation, and some dark cloud that Rhi hadn't realized was still lingering finally lifted from her. He smelled much cleaner than he had last time she'd hugged him, and for some reason that made her giggle until she had to pull away and wipe her eyes and pinch her nose lest she start crying.

“Hey,” said Ianto, looking at her with concern.

“Fine,” she said, sniffing. “Fine, yeah, needed to see you. What've you got?” She gestured at the bottle still in his hand.

“Oh,” he said. “Shiraz.”

“Well I've done a roast, that'll do.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly.

She grinned and pushed his shoulder jokingly. “Sod. Go open that, corkscrew's on the counter.” She stepped past Ianto and raised her chin, bracing herself against whatever the legendary Jack Harkness had to offer.

But what he had to offer, it turned out, was a smile that was more tired than calculating, and a hug that felt at once as though Rhi had known him forever. “I'm so sorry,” he murmured into her ear. “For this last week, the scare.”

“I-It's all right,” she stammered.

He stood back and shook his head slightly. “It isn't. The calls were too close this time.”

Rhi lifted her chin again, and said, “Well, beside all that, thank you. Thanks for saving my family. All of you.”

His smile deepened to something closer to pleasure. “Thanks for coming through for Ianto in a pinch. That car and computer saved a lot of lives.”

Johnny cleared his throat. “Erm – about that car -”

“Leave it,” Rhi started to mutter, but Jack interrupted her, “Refurbished on the company dime, now that we have a dime again.”

Ianto reentered the room and pressed a glass of shiraz into Rhi's hand, holding another himself. “No shop talk,” he said. “Just dinner, we all need a break.”

“Hear,” said Johnny. He turned to the hall and yelled, “David, Mica! Come on!”

As the kids came barrelling in, Rhi noticed that a switch seemed to flip in Jack. Ianto had never been good with the kids. With any kids, really. Even when he'd been one, he hadn't got on much with anyone his own age. Rhi had given up long ago on trying to wheedle David and Mica into interacting with their uncle; as for Ianto, she'd only ever talked him into holding David once as a baby, and never Mica.

Jack, on the other hand, lit up. It was obvious how much he loved kids, their energy, their unpredictability. When Mica fumblingly tried to climb into her high seat, Jack swept in and picked her up like she was nothing, swung her around and into the seat fast enough to tear laughter from her. “Mica, isn't it?”

“Are you Uncle Ianto's boyfriend?” she asked, still giggling.

“Jack Harkness, at your service.” He talked to her like a small adult, holding out his hand to shake hers. She seemed dazzled.

It was a shuffle, getting settled in – kids too loud and all over the place, Johnny no better. Ianto helped Rhiannon set out food without a word. She noticed that he poured a glass of water for Jack without asking, and she wondered about that, but it slipped her mind nearly as soon as she noticed it.

Dinner flew by, Jack a font of easy conversation and laughter, Johnny as crass as always but seemingly having met his match in Jack's stories. The more Jack talked, the more Rhiannon wondered how much of it could possibly be true. It seemed he'd lived an impossibly packed life for someone in his thirties, forties at most. He was older than Ianto, certainly. Rhi found herself glancing at her brother more and more – he was as quiet as always, only speaking up to land the occasional clever joke with surgical precision, but besides that he seemed relaxed. Happy. She hadn't seen him smile so much in years.

“So,” Rhi said, nudging Ianto with her elbow. Johnny was trying to scold David into eating his veg, and Jack was apparently distracted by Mica's six-year-old effort to tell a story about school without wandering off topic.

Ianto looked up at her, eyebrow raised.

“You said we were gonna talk, then,” she said. “Are we?”

He looked into his wine for a moment, and she could see the gears turning. Her stomach twisted. He was thinking of how to take it back, how to create distance again. This wasn't going to work.  
But then he said, “I don't know where to start.”

Rhi let out a long breath.

“I can tell you things now that I couldn't before,” Ianto said, picking his words carefully, “because there've been recent policy changes. About classification, and family of employees. Because Gwen, who you met – Gwen got married, and we had to let her keep her real life without making her lie to him all the time. We had to.”

“What d'you mean, keep her real life?”

Ianto tilted the wineglass, watching the clear glass stain red on each pass. “We used to be top secret, Torchwood,” he said. “Black ops, you could say. But things have been changing.” He looked up at Jack, who was watching him now, listening. “This century,” said Ianto, and he seemed to be saying it to Jack, not Rhi. “Everything's been changing.” He looked back down. “And we used to use a drug. An amnesia drug, it wiped people's memories of us, if they ran into us, or if they got caught up in our work. Policy used to be no one outside Torchwood could know _anything_ about what we did.”

Rhiannon's mind raced. “And what you do is -”

“Aliens,” Ianto said. “Anything extraterrestrial. Technology, contact. Making sure weapons don't go black market, that tech doesn't get out and interfere with civilization. Keeping world economies and governments stable, things like that.”

“Things like that?” Rhiannon said, incredulous. _“Things like that?”_

Johnny pushed his chair back. “All right, kiddos, I think it's time to get outta the way so your Mam can tear your uncle a new one.” He ushered David away from the table and picked up Mica. “All right, Rhi?” She nodded at him distractedly and he went.

“Things like that,” Ianto repeated firmly, looking her in the eyes.

“Jesus,” she said, sitting back. She knocked back the rest of her wine in one swallow and poured the end of the bottle into her glass. “Civil servant, my arse.”

Ianto chuckled. “In a sense.”

She waved her glass. “In a – a James Bond-y sense. Wavin' guns, getting' blown up. Christ.” She took another drink. “All right, so. No one could know. How'd that work?”

“Like I said, drugs.”

Rhi looked up at Ianto. He looked so sorry. Mouth dry, she asked, “Did you ever drug me?”

“No.” It was immediate and assurred, and she believed him, but her heart sank anyway because she thought she understood now. “I kept my distance,” Ianto said, “so I'd never need to. I couldn't do that to you, Rhi. Not ever.”

Years. Years of only seeing him at Christmas, of the occasional card, money for the kids. Thinking he hated her for things in their childhood that had always been out of her control. Years of awkward silences, of innocently asking “How's work?” and of Ianto leaving shortly after, making his excuses, disappearing until another holiday. Missed birthdays, unanswered phone calls.

And all the time, Ianto knowing that if he ever said a word to her, he'd have to wipe her memory. He'd have to drug her, and then live with himself after. And Rhi knew him – she knew that living with himself after would have been the one thing he couldn't do.

She reached her hand across the table and took his, and he didn't resist. She squeezed his fingers and said, “What happened? There was something big. Start with that.”

Ianto was quiet for a long moment, and she squeezed his hand again, hoping he'd be able to get there, but Jack's voice cut into the silence first.

“Ianto was at Canary Wharf three years ago,” said Jack. He'd crossed his arms and was watching them both. “You'd know it as a terrorist attack. It wasn't. It was a large-scale battle with hostile alien forces. Ianto was one of a handful of survivors out of hundreds of Torchwood London employees.”

“Christ.” Rhiannon didn't realize how tight her hand had gotten around Ianto's until he winced and she gasped a little, letting go. “God almighty, Ianto, why...” But she trailed off, wanting so badly to demand “why didn't you tell me?” but already knowing the answer. She swallowed. “Anything,” she said, finally. “Any little fragment of the truth, Ianto. God, I wish I'd known.”

“I didn't want you to,” Ianto said, and the fierceness in his voice made her look up at him. “I never wanted you to be afraid. I never wanted the life I chose to ruin yours.”

Rhiannon flushed with – with what? Anger, sympathy, fury, love. “You idiot,” she said, shaky. “You fucking idiot.”

“Yeah,” he said, and his lips quirked in the ghost of a smile.

“I could kill you,” said Rhi. “All right. How bad was it?”

“War zone,” said Ianto. “Building was burning. I...” He hesitated, and Rhi noticed his eyes flicker to Jack before he seemed to make a decision. “You remember Lisa,” he said. It wasn't a question.

“Yeah.” Lisa had died in a car accident, although Rhiannon could already tell that she was about to be informed that that was a lie. She'd thought that Lisa's senseless, tragic death had been one of the reasons Ianto had become so distant.

“She...” Ianto swallowed. “It's more complicated, but she died at Canary Wharf, and I was with her.”

“Yan...”

“I did work for Torchwood in London, but that was a different branch. Cardiff's been the head office since Canary Wharf.” He shrugged one shoulder awkwardly. “Jack hired me on because I already knew the job. And that's it, really. The rest is detail.”

Rhiannon took a steadying breath and rubbed the bridge of her nose. After a moment, she said, "That's not true. He's not just a detail." She looked pointedly at Jack.

Ianto breathed out in a whuff, and Jack gave a wry smile. "Rhiannon, could I use your facilities?" he asked, fully transparent and self-aware in his escape.

She nodded but didn't even bother with directions. As he stood to leave, his hand went briefly to Ianto's shoulder, close enough to his neck to be more intimate than a friendly pat. Then he was gone, leaving Ianto and Rhiannon alone.

After a beat, she said, "He is handsome, then."

Ianto snorted with abrupt, undignified laughter, slightly hysterical, and clapped a hand over his mouth to silence himself. "Yeah," he said, muffled, still twitching with suppression, and it set Rhi off. She started giggling and couldn't stop, gasping for breaths until her sides hurt, eyes blurred. She leaned her shoulder into her brother's and they laughed themselves breathless together, and it was the best feeling Rhi could remember since Mica was born.

"I've missed you," she hiccupped. "I've missed you, you little shit."

He nodded, put his arm around her in an awkward sideways hug, and she leaned her forehead against his ear.

"Let's have the juicy details, then," she said, shoving at him playfully.

He made a derisive noise. "I make the coffee, do the filing, and sleep with the boss. I'm a slutty secretary, Rhi."

She burst into fresh giggles. "No!"

He was laughing, too, so she didn't feel too bad. "No, I do more than that." He sucked in a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. "The team, it's small. Highly specialized. We had – until last year we had five members. Remember when those bombs went off around the city?"

She sobered, nodding.

"Two of ours..." He trailed off. "Owen and Tosh. Toshiko. They died."

"Fuck me, Yan."

He cleared his throat. "So we've been on a bit of a recruitment mission since. And in the meantime the workload, it's pretty much double. It's been a lot. I don't sleep much."

She chewed her lip. "Does he help?"

"Jack works more than any of us."

"I don't mean work, I mean you."

"I don't..."

Rhi thought about Johnny, and of what she needed that he always gave without thought, without hesitation. "Do you sleep better when he's around? Does he make you feel safe?"

Slowly, Ianto nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, he does."

She squeezed around his shoulders one more time, bumping their heads together. "All right, then," she murmured. "He passes my test."

"He'll be so pleased," he said dryly.

"Shut up, you." She let him go, still smiling. "Is he as tasty as he looks, then?"

He leaned back from the table, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "No, nope, not doing this."

"Is he up for a cuddle or does he pass out, like?"

"Oh my God," Ianto said, and stood up.

"You've missed your big sis, haven't you."

"Not anymore." He was clearing the table, his eternal defense mechanism. She got up to help.

Ianto had his sleeves rolled up and was elbow-deep in suds before she could shoo him away from the dishes, and he flicked water at her when she tried to make him stop. Of course she was well pleased not to have to do them herself, but she'd always thought Ianto's neat-freakishness was a bit absurd. A dish in the sink overnight wouldn't kill anyone. That said, watching him for a moment from the doorway, she could tell that being useful was something he needed at the moment, and that he was done with talking. He'd said more this evening than she'd gotten out of him in half a dozen Christmases combined.

Rhiannon went around to check that Johnny had gotten the kids to bed. He hadn't, of course – he was playing Xbox with David, something with guns that made Rhi wince after the week they'd had, but David was laughing. Mica was dozing against her Dad's knee. Rhi went in and kissed her daughter's hair, then Johnny's. He shook her off, laughing, “Oy, distracting me from strategy.”

“Bollocks to strategy.” Rhi moved around and blew a wet raspberry into David's cheek, and he flailed, losing his controller in the process.

“Mam!”

“That's my strategy. It'll be school again next week, so go to bed sometime before dawn, you.”

“Yeah.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Rhi kissed Johnny once more and went out again.

Besides the muffled laughter of Johnny and David, and the faint sound of running water at the kitchen sink, the house felt eerily quiet. Rhiannon walked from room to room, a purpose slowly coalescing in her mind, but she couldn't find the man she wanted until her steps carried her past the window into the back garden.

He was silhouetted by street lights. Rhiannon opened the back door and he turned slightly in her direction, but not all the way. She could see his profile but not his expression.

They stood in silence for a long moment. Rhi figured he was waiting for her to speak her piece, but she wasn't entirely sure what her piece was yet. So she settled for simple manners, and said, “Thanks for coming. I know you're busy.”

She thought she saw him smile. “Ianto didn't want to ask, I could tell. He compartmentalizes. He never wanted you to be a part of this.”

Rhi crossed her arms against the slight chill in the air, and walked out onto the path. _“This,”_ she repeated. Speculative, and a little accusatory.

He finally turned around to face her. “The danger,” he amended, ducking his head. “The crazy, world-ending stuff. There's a lot of good out there, a lot of good that he's seen and done, that he'll want to share with you. I think. Give him a little time to restructure his world.”

“You do know him, then,” she said quietly.

“Pretty well by now, I think,” he said with a sly grin.

Rhi looked him in the eye. She could see his spine straighten at the direct attention. “He told me he didn't know what this was, between you two, but that was a lie. He knows what it is to him.” She stared him down. “What about you?”

He held eye contact for a few more moments – but then he broke first, and looked away. “I know what it is,” he muttered, almost too quiet for her to hear.

She realized her heart was pounding. She clenched her fist against her chest, hugging her crossed arms tighter to herself. “You could act a little happier about it,” she said, trying not to sound bitter or nagging, trying to be steady. She just wanted to be her brother's advocate.

“Rhiannon... look at me.” He stepped closer to her, into the light from the back window. It wasn't a rhetorical line, and it sounded more tired than demanding. He gestured at his face. “How old am I?”

She furrowed her brow, confused. “I know you're older than him,” she said. “Doesn't bother me.”

“No,” said Jack, “guess. How old do I look?”

She shrugged. “Mid thirties?” she hazarded. “Forty?”

He nodded, smiling sadly. “Give it time. Soon he'll look my age, and I'll be the same. And you'll think, that Jack guy, he keeps well. Must moisturize.” Jack laughed faintly. “I mean, I do, but.” He sighed. “And then when Ianto's fifty, or sixty, and I'm the same, you'll get really suspicious. I'll still be with him. If luck and the universe hold out that long, and if he'll still have me, I'll sure as hell still be with him.” He barked a rueful laugh, and something about it scared her. “And it'll be funny for a while, people thinking he's a fancy old bastard with a hot young man on his arm – they'll think he bought me, probably. That'll get old quick.”

“I don't understand,” she said, quiet, feeling wretched and not entirely knowing why.

“I'll look like this when he dies of old age,” Jack said to her. “I'll look like this forever, probably. I'm stuck.”

“Stuck.”

“In time. Immortal, except that sounds romantic. It isn't. I'm much, much older than him, Rhiannon. And I didn't ever mean for him to fall in love with me – it's a terrible idea, falling in love with me. And I definitely tried not to love him back, but I do.”

She took a shaky breath, fidgeting with her necklace. It would have been easy to think him insane, before last week. But after everything she'd seen... “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“Because you'll see it, and there's no point putting it off,” Jack said. “If luck holds, and we do our jobs well, I have every intention of Ianto Jones living a long and happy life. Sometimes good intentions, the road to hell, you know. But the intent is there.” He took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. “I don't know if that answers your question.”

She swallowed hard. “I reckon,” she said, voice rough. “He knows, right?”

“Yep,” said Ianto's voice from the doorway behind her, making her nearly jump out of her skin. Rhi turned to include him, and he took the last step down from the door to stand by her, leaning briefly against her shoulder. “All right?” he asked quietly, meeting her eyes.

“Are you?” she whispered back, fighting the watery blur threatening the edges of her vision again.

He nodded, gave her a smile that broke her heart, and gathered her into his arms while her last walls crumbled and acceptance came flooding in. “You're mad,” she hiccuped into his shoulder, and he held her tighter. “Mad and I love you, I love you, never leave me.”

“Never on purpose,” he told her. “Not anymore.”

It took her a moment to collect herself. When she pulled back, pinching her nose and clearing her throat, she looked around at Jack again. He was smiling softly. “Well,” she said. “I suppose he'll do.”

Jack's smile broadened and Ianto laughed faintly.

Rhiannon squared her shoulders, rubbed her wrist under her nose and crossed her arms. “You're doing some hiring on, right?” she said to Jack, forcing backbone into her voice again. “I won't have you running Ianto into the ground, he looks like he hasn't slept all week.”

“You should talk,” Jack said, eyebrow quirking.

She scoffed, dismissing the fact that he was right and she knew it.

“Yes,” Ianto said, putting a placating hand on Rhi's shoulder. “We've already taken on two, and we're considering more.”

“Well,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Would you come round for dinner sometimes?”

“Yeah,” said Ianto, smiling. “Yeah, I will.”

“Tell me how it's going.”

He nodded.

“All right.” She rubbed her eyes again. “All right. I'm bloody exhausted.”

“It's a lot,” Ianto said. “But it'll be all right.” He glanced at Jack. “We'll make it all right.”

Rhi took her brother's hand in both of hers. She couldn't think of anything to say, but she held his hand, feeling the pulse strong under his skin, and after a long moment she raised his hand to her mouth and pressed her lips to his knuckles.

He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “It's late,” he said. “I heard Johnny putting the kids to bed before I came out. Everything's cleared up. You should get some sleep.”

She nodded, mouth twisting.

“I love you,” Ianto said, squeezing her hand. “I'll talk to you tomorrow, yeah?”

“Love you,” she said, and sniffed, and pushed their joined hands against his shoulder. “Get out, then, I've been soggy enough for one night.”

He smiled again. She could get used to seeing him smile so often and so easily.

She led the way back inside and waved the men towards the front door while stepping away into the kitchen for a moment. She returned to them with the remains of the bara brith on a plate, which she pushed into Ianto's hands.

“Rhi,” he said, sighing.

“Not eating enough, I reckon,” she said stubbornly, raising her chin. “And the rest of the team. All that work to do, none of you taking care of yourselves.”

A grin flickered over Ianto's mouth. “Thanks, Mam.”

She poked his chest with an accusing finger. “Don't you dare.”

Even Jack was suppressing a laugh. “We've already got Rhys bringing casseroles every other day.”

“Well, I'm not catering unless you pay me,” Rhi said.

Jack raised his eyebrows. “That's a thought,” he murmured.

Ianto elbowed Jack in the side. “You can't have a matched set,” he said. Jack pretended to pout, and Ianto took his arm, plate balanced in the other hand. “Good night, Rhi.”

“Night,” she called after them as they headed down the walk towards Ianto's car. She had just stepped back and was pushing the door to when she happened to see them pause at the curb, talking in voices too low and far away to hear. Then Ianto touched Jack's face, hand caressing his cheek briefly before carding into his hair and pulling him into a kiss.

Rhiannon watched for a second that felt like slow motion. It was one thing, hearing it talked about, or even hearing it from Ianto himself – that he loved a man. Meeting Jack, Rhiannon completely understood. But it was another thing entirely to see Ianto kiss the man he loved in the middle of an estate so very like the one that would have smeared him into the pavement for daring such a thing ten years ago. To see Ianto dare to be in the wrong kind of love in front of a home so very like the one in which his father had laid vicious verbal claws into the _queers_ he dealt with at Debenhams.

Heart thrumming, Rhiannon closed the door before they'd parted, giving them privacy in the moment, and also giving herself the space to find her composure once again. Because _this_ – Ianto's willingness to simply live, to merely exist as himself, in her presence – was what she had missed so badly all along. The rest of it, aliens and immortality and time, still felt mad and unreal and she felt she'd never be able to truly process it all. But Ianto being in love? That was a thing she could understand. It was something she could cherish against the darkness.

“They gone?” Johnny had wandered back into the room.

She sniffed again and looked up at him, beaming. “Yeah. But they'll be back.”

-


End file.
